Since 1998, The Trust has given more than $215,000 to young poets and writers. More importantly, it has affirmed the work of about 8,000 young poets and writers through critical feedback, workshops and events akin to sports banquets – but with much better music. During several bountiful years, the Trust was able to send young poets and writers abroad for a week to take in events including the Dublin Writers Festival.

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Many alums have gone on to be teachers.

One of them, Candi Deschamps, will be a keynote speaker at this year’s annual celebration, scheduled June 8 at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. The event is free and open to the public.

“I remember that it was one of the highlights of my life,” Deschamps – the 2001 state prose champion – told the Danbury News Times a few years ago as The Trust faced the loss of $20,000 in annual funding from its two primary donors. “I couldn’t believe I was being recognized by adults as a real writer. It wasn’t just recognition of my writing, but recognition of my voice and recognition that I had something to say.”

Deschamps, a Danbury High alumna, went on to graduate from Smith College and Teachers College at Columbia University. She worked as an editor at the Hudson Review, at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York and as a capital campaign assistant at Lincoln Center, before teaching at the Bronx School of Law and Finance and The Nightingale-Bamford School.

Deschamps will be joined at CCSU by fellow presenters, novelist Michael White, director of Fairfield University’s Master of Fine Arts creative writing program; and poet Jasmine Dreame Wagner, who teaches at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. Musical entertainment will be provided by the indie band Wise Old Moon.

By way of disclosure, I helped set up the Trust at the urging of the late Jim Irwin, who owned the Litchfield Inn and ran an international corporation called IMPAC. The pro bono lawyer who made it legal was Peter Litwin of Litchfield, who even paid the filing fees.

The past several years, the Trust has been in the able hands of Chairman Ravi Shankar, the poet and professor at CCSU; and Vice Chairman Rand Cooper, the author, essayist and restaurant critic for the New York Times. Board member Lauren Doninger, a professor at Gateway Community College, has recruited hard-working interns Elyse Pedra and Jennifer Schmahl to bring some order to the enterprise.

The Trust operated its first two years just in Litchfield County, then expanded to cover the entire state via a partnership with Bill Cibes, chairman emeritus of the Connecticut State University System.

“Do me a favor,” Irwin told me after the competition went statewide, “Don’t ever put me in a meeting again with that guy Cibes – he just cost me ten grand a year … ”

As funding from IMPAC and ultimately the CSU System dried up, a cash infusion of $10,000 from the family trust of Glastonbury businessman Matt Daly kept the program alive in 2010. A benefit featuring novelist Wally Lamb and poet Marilyn Nelson at The Harford Club generated prize money in 2012. Throughout the course of the program, donations from many banks, real estate and law firms, small businesses and individuals have kept the Trust chugging along. The past few years, a pilot program set up by Trust board member John Salatto – principal of St. Frances-St. Hedwig School in Naugatuck – has spread to school districts throughout the state. This program places poets and writers in schools, running workshops for students and teachers and generating donations.

The annual celebration June 8 will honor 24 young poets and writers. Following is a complete listing of the state finalists.

Andy Thibault is a contributing editor for 21st Century Media’s Connecticut publications and the author of Law & Justice In Everyday Life. He formerly served as a commissioner for Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission. Reach Thibault by email at tntcomm82@cs.com. Follow him on Twitter @cooljustice.

About the Author

Contributing editor Andy Thibault writes a weekly column for The Register Citizen and other 21st Century Media Co. newspapers in Connecticut. Find him online at cooljustice.blogspot.com. Reach the author at tntcomm82@cs.com
or follow Andy on Twitter: @CoolJustice.